Paul Nehlen Blames ADL For Twitter Ban
Congressional candidate Paul Nehlen has grown closer to white nationalist leaders and thinkers in recent months. Image by Twitter
By Aiden Pink February 13, 2018
After being banned from Twitter, “alt-right” congressional candidate Paul Nehlen said Monday that his removal from the social media service was illegal election interference done at the behest of the Anti-Defamation League and possibly the British government.
Nehlen has repeatedly associated himself with white supremacists and was previously suspended from Twitter for a week for publishing anti-Semitic posts. But the final straw was likely a tweet superimposing the head of “Cheddar Man,” a dark-skinned 9,000-year-old Mesolithic man “rebuilt” from the DNA of a skeleton in southwest England, on the body of Meghan Markle, the fiancee of Great Britain’s Prince Harry.
In a Facebook statement on Monday, Nehlen noted Twitter’s partnership with the ADL, which he called “a pro-censorship extremist organization” that had a mission to “suppress right-wing political speech.” He also speculated that Britain “may also be involved in this unlawful election interference,” and promised to file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission.
Nehlen has repeatedly threatened the ADL, including last week, when he appeared on a YouTube show that frequently hosts white supremacists and promised to revoke the organization’s not-for-profit status when he was elected to Congress. ““Mark my words, they are gonna be be sorry that they came after me because I will never, ever back down,” he said.
Twitter does not normally explain its suspensions publicly, but a spokesperson told NPR that Nehlen had repeatedly violated the site’s terms of service.
Nehlen hopes to unseat Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in the Republican primary in their Wisconsin district in August. Nehlen ran against Ryan in 2016 and lost 84%-16%.
Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink
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